News Release

Climate Talks Agreement a “Roadmap to Disaster”

MICHAEL DORSEY, michael.dorsey at dartmouth.edu,
Professor at the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College, Dorsey said this afternoon: “This current draft text in circulation is a death sentence for Africa. Countries may not even examine progress until 2015. The are not obliged to do anything until AFTER 2020. This agreement is a roadmap to disaster.” Dorsey appeared on Democracy Now this morning.

ANNE PETERMANN, annep at riseup.net,JEFF CONANT, jc at globaljusticeecology.org
Petermann is the executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project. She and two other delegates were removed from the conference today. Petermann states they had refused to moved and were carried out, explaining that the climate talks are now dominated by corporate interests and that civil society has been blocked out.

JANET REDMAN, janet at ips-dc.orgDAPHNE WYSHAM, [in DC] via Lacy MacAuley, Institute for Policy Studies, lacy at ips-dc.org
Redman and Wysham are co-directors of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies. Redman said today: “The situation here in Durban is dire. The lives of hundreds of millions of people hang in the balance of deals being brokered now behind closed doors. The latest we’re hearing is that the leaders of developing countries are outright rejecting proposals that kill the legally binding treaty to reduce climate pollution — the Kyoto Protocol. But the U.S. and European countries are dangling the promise of millions of dollars to get countries most vulnerable to climate impacts not to push back on a new mandate that does away with equity. Impoverished countries will get an empty shell of a Green Climate Fund with no money. Meanwhile leaders of peoples’ movements from across the African continent, from low-lying island countries and from communities in the high Andes, are calling on delegates not to sign a death sentence for the world’s climate-vulnerable communities. What we need now is a solution to the climate crisis that deals in ecological reality, not corporate interests and power politics.”

Wysham has been attending climate summits regularly since 1997. View a recent interview with Wysham on the Durban summit with The Real News.

Wysham said today: “Occupy fever took over the climate negotiations, on the final day of talks in Durban: Protestors briefly shut down the plenary, calling out the richest 1%, including the polluters, for gambling with everyone’s future by advancing a deal that is so bad–allowing tempertaures to rise by 7 degrees Fahrenheit– that the best that can happen is a collapse and total rejection of the process. The good news is, despite U.S. government and polluter’s obstructionism at all levels, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are down 7 percent since 2007. This has nothing to do with national or international agreements made by the 1% and everything to do with grassroots mobilization by the 99%, non-violent civil disobedience, and support for strong regulations. In addition to international solidarity with the poorest in the developing world, this is the way forward.”